Nice find by reader D. This is a long article about a newish TLM parish in Park Hills, KY, a town of about 3000 people. The TLMers have found quiet supporters and loud opponents, which opposition seems quite detached from any real-world concerns, but fall into “I don’t like them sortsa people” category.

Reader D speaks highly of the Missionaries of St. John the Baptist, who run this TLM community with 5(!!) priests. And that for a parish with maybe 150 souls. Shoot I wish we had five here in Irving! We could sure use ’em! I know only a little about the Missionaries of St. John, but good on all they seem to be doing, especially Eucharistic processions on public streets which seem to have weirded the local freakshow out.

In Park Hills, a beautiful spot on the Kentucky side of the river, a group of traditional Catholic newcomers wants to build a grotto, like the one in Lourdes, France, where miracles are said to have happened.

But the preparation for such a miracle is drawing fire from those who worry about the traffic that would come, the changes that would be required of the town of 3,000 and the more narrow mindset that many say is coming with it.

“Everyone is entitled to believe what they want,” said resident Gretchen Stephenson. “I have a problem when those beliefs cross into our secular government.” [I’m not sure how building a grotto on private land somehow compromises secular government. Basically what the article reveals is a deep hostility towards believing Christians, and anything those Christians want to do]

……….A year ago, Our Lady of Lourdes Church opened.

Not many in the community took note when, in June 2016, Covington Bishop Roger Foys issued a decree consecrating the 80-year-old church building. A year earlier, the nondenominational Christian Faith Church moved out.

Our Lady of Lourdes is now the only diocesan-recognized church in the Cincinnati area devoted solely to the old Latin Mass………[Follows an interesting but common discussion of what separates the TLM from what passes for Catholicism in most locales over the past 50 years, including conversions/reversions because of the reverence and plain efficacy of the TLM]

[One thing I like about this parish is how public their displays of faith are. We locals need to start entering floats in the Irving parades]……They participated in the town’s Memorial Day Parade with a float. A church member dressed as the Virgin Mary struck a prayerful pose on a float made to look like a grotto.

But they are clashing with the community.

They’re planning a grotto, like the one that made the peasant girl into St. Bernadette, and the cave into a destination for millions of pilgrims over the past 150 years. (Every year, 350,000 pilgrims continue to bathe in the waters of the spring in the grotto, which believers have attributed miraculous healings.) [Yes, but that’s Lourdes. There are hundreds of Marian and even Lourdes grottoes around the country and few draw more than a few dozen a week over and above regular parishioners]

So intent are the members of Park Hills church on achieving this goal that they are raising $300,000 to $400,000 to have a grotto by 2019, according to the church newsletter.

To some residents, the image of thousands of pilgrims clogging their narrow streets has struck fear in their hearts. [Oh please. Pure self-interested BS]

……….the church, in a statement, estimated the grotto will attract 50 people a day. The statue of Mary would be just under five feet.

“Anyone who cares to visit this little cave will find this a peaceful place,” said Father Sean Kopczynski, one of the priests at Our Lady of Lourdes, during a presentation to the Park Hills City Council……..

……The whole idea took Park Hills by surprise when it came to light in February. Those shocked included Mayor Matt Mattone who became mayor in 2015, his first public office.

“It’s surreal to me,” Mattone said. “It is kinda like a Twilight Zone I’ve inherited. All this is happening beneath the scenes that no one knew about and suddenly it’s coming to fruition.” [Good Lord these things are built on Catholic parishes every year! It doesn’t harm the community, they should be grateful for the potential income from tourism and other sources. Comparing a parish grotto to Lourdes is like comparing this tiny little parish of a couple hundred souls to St. Peter’s.

The more you talk to residents and church members, the more the issue goes beyond the church and the grotto. Some neighbors feel the church has attracted an intolerant group of people to the city.The church members feel that they’re under attack from a city that doesn’t know or care about them. [And so we come to the point, a small town in KY serving as a microcosm of fallen post-Christian America, where there are sodomite couples just itching to take on the pretense of persecution so they can get their victimhood bucks]

………..An anti-gay bumper stickeron a car parked in a specific spot in this progressive town has raised her ire.

“We bought a gay pride flag,” Froelich said. “This is ridiculous. That kind of intolerance is not acceptable.” [No, what you mean is, I have deeply held religious beliefs, and Christian beliefs contradict my own, and I don’t want to countenance that. Note parishioners claim the bumper sticker issue has been the source of progressive lies, which, given things like how the recent Google memo was utterly misrepresented by the press and progressives, but I repeat myself, go figure]

Bob Ford noticed the bumper sticker while working in his garden this February. It was affixed to a gray sedan parked in front of the house he and his husband, Steve Crites, have owned for the past nine years.

Cars often don’t park in front of their home due to the narrow streets.

Church members and residents differ on what the bumper sticker said.

Ford and Crites said the sticker had the phrase “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” implying homosexuality is heretical. Ford and Crites don’t think it was accidental that the car with that bumper sticker ended up parked in front of their home for more than a week.

“No, this does not need to happen here,” Ford said were his first thoughts. “Can you believe this?”

The sticker had been slapped on over an anti-abortion sticker that had been on the car. Those in the neighborhood said it belonged to church members at the end of the street. Church members said the bumper sticker read: “Male and Female He created Them -Genesis 1:27.”

“Obviously with the Catholic Church and the Ten Commandments, which everyone used to believe, there’s a whole tension in a society that’s very divided,” church pastor Collins said.

Some residents rushed to the church’s defense. They see the church as the victim of hate.

It’s everyone else that’s intolerant, said one woman, identified only as Maureen, at a February council meeting.

………[City Councilwoman and parish supporter Pam] Spoor has recused herself from any votes about the church. She believes church members have been the target of undue scrutiny and harassment from the rest of the city. [Indeed. Small additions like this grotto rarely attract any political attention. They happen all the time. Goodness a smaller one was built at our local parish last year with nary a peep. There is bigotry and intolerance here, as noted below, but it’s not coming from the Catholics.]

“I don’t like to hear that from my city,” Spoor said. “I’ve lived in my city for 39 years. All the intolerance and bigotry, there is no room for that in any city.”

There is much more, and more revealing, at the link, but I’ve taken probably more than I should have. You should definitely read the rest.

It goes on to discuss how the parish held a procession on public streets (good for them!), and how that really ignored the intolerant progressives in the nearby neighborhood. So several of them camped out in front of the parish for hours one Sunday with phones in hand ready to record this horrible assault on their progressive sensibilities. Unfortunately, the bullying may have worked, or perhaps prudence was at play, but the community just lapped around the parish property instead of giving public witness as they have in the past.

As reader D noted, what a commentary on both our Church and our times. Now the few faithful Catholics are the oddballs, the trouble makers, the targets of persecution, while the leadership of the Church almost universally prostrates itself before a culture that will always, always hate them, not for what they do, but for Whom they represent.

Get ready for tough times ahead. But such times make martyrdom, and God loves best those who cooperate with the trials and mortifications He sends, or allows.

I pray this parish gets their grotto, and that they witness our glorious Faith as boldly and fervently and as publicly as humanly possible.

The comments on the article are typical – Church haters and defenders of Tradition. One interesting point noted in the comments is that the area already has 3 Catholic grottoes of various types, and they haven’t caused the flood of traffic so dreaded by opponents of the parish. This is about antipathy toward authentic Catholicism, pure and simple.

I would say briefly, in conclusion – imagine opposing a shrine to the Holy Mother of God. What a sick, perverse, and most of all pathetically small-minded time we live in.